New Mage developments for 5.2

For Arcane, we are going to try going down to 4 stacks (down from 6) that increase damage by 50% (up from 25%) and mana cost by 150% (up from 75%). Our goal for Arcane, which hasn't changed in some time, is for the spec to focus on mana management with the ability to go up to high DPS for a high mana cost when needed. We don't want Arcane to sit at max stacks all the time. As a player who is focused on maximizing DPS, you're going to want to maximize stacks, but it's not always going to be easy to do - that's the challenge of mastering the spec. The reason we lowered the stack size is we felt that having to build up to 6 made dropping stacks feel too punitive.

Also for Arcane, Scorch deals 40% less damage for Arcane only, but its damage and mana are now increased by Arcane Charge. We agreed that previous iterations were too punitive for Fire and Frost. For Arcane, using Scorch as part of the base rotation won't be as powerful as it is today on live (which we feel violates the stack management I mentioned above), but it will increase with stacks.

It was the right choice to bring Arcane back to 4 stacks. Now it will be easier and will require more skills to maintain a conservation and have a good burn phase as arcane. Will be very similar to how Arcane was in Firelands as I understand. Scorch keeping the mana cost is great news for Fire and Frost and I am happy that Arcane will not be using it as it will be a dps decrease in most cases.
Now, all they need to do is to make Inferno Blast a Fire only spell which seems right to me as "inferno" is very relative to Fire and keep the bomb spreading up to 4 targets with it. That way they will keep Fire a great aoe strong spec as its single target damage is pretty lame at its current state in comparison with Arcane or even Frost...

Hope they will give Frost some love. The current state is absolutely boring. Maybe I'll go Arcane during the next content, but I fear my equip will totally suck cause I don't have any mastery at all (only on set pieces).

Absolutely love it. More on demand burst, less rampup time, more flexibility in how you want to play, when to burst, etc. And removing the boring 6 stack camping @ 99% mana strategy.

precies wat ik dacht.

The Arcane change back to 4 stacks is a move in the right direction pretty much from every angle I'm looking from right now.
Furthermore, I really do agree that the 'camping' playstyle of old was an abomination and not 'fun' or 'challenging' in the slightest. The entire camping strategy revolved around fishing for AM procs, which just turned Arcane into another RNG spec. Arcane was never supposed to be the Mage RNG-y spec, that was Fire's job.

That being said, imho the scorch change wont make it a mandatory talent for Arcane like some of you think it will. The 40% damage nerf will be offset mainly by Mana Adept. What it will do, is significantly boost Arcane's mobile DPS for fights with very hectic movement (I think Ice Flows will still win out for fights with medium-ish movement - esp now with the cap being 4 stacks). I was speaking to Logix last night and he was the one who brought up the following point which made sense to me.

The point being that previously, 2 mobile Arcane blasts (through Ice Flows) would give you 2 out of 7 charges, which is basically ~28% of a full stack. With the change, 2 mobile Arcane Blasts will now give 2 out of 5 charges (40%), which means that just by reducing the stack size to 4, they have buffed the value of Ice Flows for arcane (and this is on top of the fact that you can pew pew AMs with ice flows too).
The scorch change then, i think, could be a way to offset this 'side effect' buff to ice flows that the Arcane Charge change will have. If they didn't alter scorch in some way (i.e. make it more appealing for Arcane) people would just use Ice flows as the goto arcane talent. I think we can safely say that with the increased mana cost at max stack, the concept of scorch 'camping' is good and dead.

What i think is falling behind is PoM. In the face of the new scorch AND the way Ice flows is now inadvertently buffed due to the arcane change, PoM really is falling behind. Sure, we can use a similar logic to say that there is a slight buff to PoM with the reduced stack, but PoM is the weakest of the 3 for pve anyway. Maybe a significantly reduced cooldown?

On a separate point, this exact change is already being discussed in depth in the big 5.2 ptr changes thread. There is already a lot of discussion about it there. Its best we focus our feedback/analysis in one place rather than create new threads. That way we can ensure we are covering all aspects and that points are not getting lost and/or repeated.

Maybe close this thread down and move your thoughts to the main thread?

Going down to 4 stacks is a step in the right direction, especially considering that they want us to reset stacks more often as part of our *fun* mana management playstyle. Going up to 6 stacks was really annoying, 4 seems quite a bit better. Only thing 6 stacks was better was unloading the stack in the form or Barrage on 7 mobs. But 5 will do as well, ant such large groups aren't *that* common, only trash and e.g. Wind Lord.

I suppose it's .... good? that they changes Scorch this way. Still sucks they don't allow us to play any other way than the one *they* intended but at least they don't ruin Scorch for all specs, just for Arcane. Seems kinds ham-handed though to restrict it just for Arcane. What if Frost finds some way to use it in an unintended way? Restrict it for Arcane and Frost, just plain restrict it to Fire again, ...

Will a 4 stack Arcane Barrage hit for about as much as a 4 stack Arcane Blast? It feels like it should hit harder, as a reward for playing the spec the way they want you to. I'd even be in favor of nerfing Arcane Blast for a stronger Arcane Barrage. Even when I've seen it crit I've hardly ever though "Oh, I'm glad I cast that!"

I do like the idea of having only 4 stacks to worry about. Absolutely hate wasting the majority of a Yu'Lon proc just getting back up to 6 stacks.

Will a 4 stack Arcane Barrage hit for about as much as a 4 stack Arcane Blast? It feels like it should hit harder, as a reward for playing the spec the way they want you to. I'd even be in favor of nerfing Arcane Blast for a stronger Arcane Barrage. Even when I've seen it crit I've hardly ever though "Oh, I'm glad I cast that!"

I do like the idea of having only 4 stacks to worry about. Absolutely hate wasting the majority of a Yu'Lon proc just getting back up to 6 stacks.

I believe the damage increase applies to ABarr and AM as well as Arcane Blast.

The problem with increasing Barrage's damage is that it is already actually a very powerful spell; increasing its damage even further would result in tears from PvPers (ignoring the fact nobody PvPs as Arcane). It's not fun for many at present because it makes your spells hit for less and have to build up -another- six Arcane Charges.

I actually don't like its cleave functionality very much. But that's just me.

In fights where cleave is actually undesirable (Amber burn strat - no cleaving, Lei Shi adds - don't want to agrro, etc.), how exactly are we supposed to control this using the "sanctioned" arcane rotation? The Discreet Magic glyph should be returned to the game (I believe it was removed, I can't find it anymore) and also cause barrage to not cleave in 5.2

In fights where cleave is actually undesirable (Amber burn strat - no cleaving, Lei Shi adds - don't want to agrro, etc.), how exactly are we supposed to control this using the "sanctioned" arcane rotation? The Discreet Magic glyph should be returned to the game (I believe it was removed, I can't find it anymore) and also cause barrage to not cleave in 5.2